The Amazon Kindle Voyage was leaked earlier in the day and now it has been officially unveiled and it seems like the best e-reader ever made.
The new Voyage e-reader features a six inch capacitive touchscreen display with the latest generation e-Ink Carta. It has an adaptive front light that adjusts automatically, 300 ppi, optimized font technology, 16-level gray scale. I really liked the fact that the screen is flush with the bezel, all prior Kindle models have a sunken screen. This means that Amazon has fully abandoned Neonode IR Touch technology for their flagship e-reader model.
Instead of physical page turn buttons, the new Kindle Voyage has a feature called PagePress. This is a custom-designed force sensor made of carbon and silver, which reacts to a subtle increase of pressure, triggers a page-turn, and provides a haptic response only your thumb can perceive. Because PagePress has no moving parts, the haptics provide you with the most minimal indication that you have pressed the button, to reduce distraction from reading.
Apparently the front-lit technology has undergone a radical advancement, and the Kindle Paperwhite 2 had the best one in the business? How could Amazon top it? They mentioned “in order to more closely resemble reading on real paper, we researched and hand-tuned the optimal brightness setting for every lighting condition. The new adaptive front light automatically adjusts the brightness of the display based on your environment, and can even be fine-tuned further to your personal preferences. When reading in the dark, the adaptive front light slowly lowers the display’s brightness over time to match the way the eye responds to darkness.”
Most of the enhancements on the new Kindle Voyage have to do with the new software features. You can see at a glance how long it will take to finish a chapter or book with Time to Read. It is completely personalized based on your reading speed, and is constantly updated as your speed and habits change. Word Wise, available on many popular English language titles, makes it easier to enjoy and quickly understand more challenging books. Short and simple definitions automatically appear above difficult words, so you can keep reading with fewer interruptions. Tap on a word to bring up a simple card with definitions, synonyms, and more. You can adjust the number of hints you see with a simple slider. In the next few weeks About the Book will be pushed via a firmware update that will let you see information about the book as you start to read, including its place in a series and author information, plus mark it as “Currently Reading” on Goodreads.
There is no word yet on hardware specs, such as the processor and RAM. It does have 4 GB internal storage in the stock configureration and is available in the WIFI or 3G variants. Pre-orders are available now and it starts shipping in October.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.